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Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6e (Gaddis)
Chapter 5 Methods

5.1 Multiple Choice Questions

1) Methods are commonly used to:

A) speed up the compilation of a program
B) break a problem down into small manageable pieces
C) emphasize certain parts of the logic
D) document the program
Answer: B

2) Which of the following is NOT a benefit derived from using methods in programming?
A) Pproblems are more easily solved.
B) simplifies programs
C) code reuse
D) All of the above are benefits.
Answer: D

3) This type of method performs a task and sends a value back to the code that called it.
A) value-returning
B) void
C) complex
D) local
Answer: A

4) In the following code, System.out.println(num) is an example of:

double num = 5.4;

System.out.println(num);
num = 0.0;
A) a value-returning method
B) a void method
C) a complex method
D) a local variable
Answer: B

5) To create a method you must write its:

A) header
B) return type
C) body
D) definition
Answer: D

1
Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
6) In the header, the method name is always followed by this:
A) parentheses
B) return type
C) data type
D) braces
Answer: A

7) This part of a method is a collection of statements that are performed when the method is executed.
A) method header
B) return type
C) method body
D) method modifier
Answer: C

8) Which of the following is NOT part of a method call?

A) method name
B) return type
C) parentheses
D) all of the above are part of a method call
Answer: B

9) If method A calls method B, and method B calls method C, and method C calls method D, when
method D finishes, what happens?
A) Control is returned to method A.
B) Control is returned to method B.
C) Control is returned to method C.
D) The program terminates.
Answer: C

10) Values that are sent into a method are called:

A) variables
B) arguments
C) literals
D) types
Answer: B

11) When an argument is passed to a method:

A) its value is copied into the method's parameter variable
B) its value may be changed within the called method
C) values may not be passed to methods
D) the method must not assign another value to the parameter that receives the argument
Answer: A

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
12) What is wrong with the following method call?

displayValue (double x);

A) There is nothing wrong with the statement.
B) displayValue will not accept a parameter.
C) Do not include the data type in the method call.
D) x should be a String.
Answer: C

13) Given the following method header, which of the method calls would be an error?

public void displayValues(int x, int y)

A) displayValue(a,b); // where a is a short and b is a byte
B) displayValue(a,b); // where a is an int and b is a byte
C) displayValue(a,b); // where a is a short and b is a long
D) They would all give an error.
Answer: C

14) Which of the following would be a valid method call for the following method?

public static void showProduct (int num1, double num2)

{
int product;
product = num1 * (int)num2;
System.out.println("The product is " + product);
}
A) showProduct(5.5, 4.0);
B) showProduct(10.0, 4);
C) showProduct(10, 4.5);
D) showProduct(33.0, 55.0);
Answer: C

15) When an object, such as a String, is passed as an argument, it is:

A) actually a reference to the object that is passed
B) passed by value like any other parameter value
C) encrypted
D) necessary to know exactly how long the string is when writing the program
Answer: A

16) All @param tags in a method's documentation comment must:

A) end with a */
B) appear after the general description of the method
C) appear before the method header
D) span several lines
Answer: B

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
17) A special variable that holds a value being passed into a method is called what?
A) Modifier
B) Parameter
C) Alias
D) Argument
Answer: B

18) When you pass an argument to a method, be sure that the argument's data type is compatible with:
A) the parameter variable's data type
B) the method's return type
C) the version of Java currently being used
D) IEEE standards
Answer: A

19) A parameter variable's scope is:

A) the method in which the parameter is declared
B) the class to which the method belongs
C) the main method
D) All of the above
Answer: A

20) The lifetime of a method's local variable is:

A) the duration of the program
B) the duration of the class to which the method belongs
C) the duration of the method that called the local variable's method
D) only while the method is executing
Answer: D

21) Local variables:

A) are hidden from other methods
B) may have the same name as local variables in other methods
C) lose the values stored in them between calls to the method in which the variable is declared
D) All of the above
Answer: D

22) Which of the following values can be passed to a method that has an int parameter variable?
A) float
B) double
C) long
D) All of the above
E) None of the above
Answer: E

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
23) The header of a value-returning method must specify this.
A) The method's local variable names
B) The name of the variable in the calling program that will receive the returned value
C) The data type of the return value
D) All of the above
Answer: C

24) What will be returned from the following method?

public static double methodA()

{
double a = 8.5 + 9.5;
return a;
}
A) 18.0
B) 18 (as an integer)
C) 8
D) This is an error.
Answer: A

25) In a @return tag statement the description:

A) cannot be longer than one line
B) describes the return value
C) must be longer than one line
D) describes the parameter values
Answer: B

26) When a method tests an argument and returns a true or false value, it should return:
A) a zero for true and a one for false
B) a boolean value
C) a zero for false and a non-zero for true
D) a method should not be used for this type test
Answer: B

27) The phrase divide and conquer is sometimes used to describe:

A) the backbone of the scientific method
B) the process of dividing functions
C) the process of breaking a problem down into smaller pieces
D) the process of using division to solve a mathematical problem
Answer: C

28) In a general sense, a method is:

A) a plan
B) a statement inside a loop
C) a comment
D) a collection of statements that performs a specific task
Answer: D

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
29) Breaking a program down into small manageable methods:
A) makes problems more easily solved
B) allows for code reuse
C) simplifies programs
D) all of the above
Answer: D

30) This type of method performs a task and then terminates.

A) value-returning
B) void
C) local
D) simple
Answer: B

31) In the following code, Integer.parseInt(str), is an example of:

int num;
string str = "555";
num = Integer.parseInt(str) + 5;
A) a value-returning method
B) a void method
C) a local variable
D) a complex method
Answer: A

32) Which of the following is NOT a part of the method header?

A) return type
B) method name
C) parentheses
D) semicolon
Answer: D

33) Which of the following is included in a method call?

A) return type
B) method modifiers
C) parentheses
D) return variable
Answer: C

34) You should always document a method by writing comments that appear:
A) just before the method's definition
B) just after the method's definition
C) at the end of the file
D) only if the method is more than five lines long
Answer: A

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35) When an argument value is passed to a method, the receiving parameter variable is:
A) declared within the body of the method
B) declared in the method header inside the parentheses
C) declared in the calling method
D) uses the declaration of the argument
Answer: B

36) If you attempt to use a local variable before it has been given a value:
A) a compiler error will occur
B) the local variable will always contain the value 0
C) the results will be unpredictable
D) the local variable will be ignored
Answer: A

37) What will be the result of the following code?

int num;
string str = "555";
num = Integer.parseInt(string str) + 5;
A) num will be set to 560.
B) str will have a value of "560".
C) The last line of code will cause an error.
D) Neither num or str will be changed.
Answer: C

38) Given the following method header, which of the method calls would be an error?

public void displayValues(double x, int y)

A) displayValue(a,b); // where a is a long and b is a byte
B) displayValue(a,b); // where a is an int and b is a byte
C) displayValue(a,b); // where a is a short and b is a long
D) They would all give an error.
Answer: C

39) Which of the following would be a valid method call for the following method?

public static void showProduct(double num1, int num2)

{
double product;
product = num1 * num2;
System.out.println("The product is " +
product);
}
A) showProduct("5", "40");
B) showProduct(10.0, 4.6);
C) showProduct(10, 4.5);
D) showProduct(3.3, 55);
Answer: D

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40) When writing the documentation comments for a method, you can provide a description of each
parameter by using a:
A) @comment tag
B) @doc tag
C) @param tag
D) @return tag
Answer: C

41) Values stored in local variables:

A) are lost between calls to the method in which they are declared
B) retain their values from the last call to the method in which they are declared
C) may be referenced by the calling method
D) may be referenced by any other method, if the method in which they are declared is a public method
Answer: A

42) Local variables can be initialized with:

A) constants
B) parameter values
C) the results of an arithmetic operation
D) any of the above
Answer: D

43) A value-returning method must specify this as its return type in the method header.
A) an int
B) a double
C) a boolean
D) any valid data type
Answer: D

44) What will be returned from the following method?

public static int methodA()

{
double a = 8.5 + 9.5;
return a;
}
A) 18.0
B) 18 (as an integer)
C) 8.0
D) This is an error.
Answer: D

45) To document the return value of a method, use this in a documentation comment.
A) The @param tag
B) The @comment tag
C) The @return tag
D) The @returnValue tag
Answer: C

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46) The process of breaking a problem down into smaller pieces is sometimes called:
A) divide and conquer
B) scientific method
C) top-down programming
D) whole-into-part
Answer: A

47) Any method that calls a method with a throws clause in its header must:
A) handle the potential exception
B) have the same throws clause
C) both of the above
D) do nothing, the called program will take care of the throws clause
Answer: C

48) Assume that the following method header is for a method in class A.

public void displayValue(int value)

Assume that the following code segments appear in another method, also in class A. Which contains a
legal call to the displayValue method?
A) int x = 7;
void displayValue(x);
B) int x = 7;
displayValue(x);
C) int x = 7;
displayValue(int x);
D) int x = 7;
displayValue(x)
Answer: B

5.2 True/False Questions

1) Methods are commonly used to break a problem into small manageable pieces.
Answer: TRUE

2) Two general categories of methods are void methods and value returning methods.
Answer: TRUE

3) In the method header, the method modifier public means that the method belongs to the class, not a
specific object.
Answer: FALSE

4) Constants, variables, and the values of expressions may be passed as arguments to a method.
Answer: TRUE

5) A parameter variable's scope is the method in which the parameter is declared.

Answer: TRUE

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6) You must have a return statement in a value-returning method.
Answer: TRUE

7) Any method that calls a method with a throws clause in its header must either handle the potential
exception or have the same throws clause.
Answer: TRUE

8) In the method header the static method modifier means the method is available to code outside the
class.
Answer: FALSE

9) Only constants and variables may be passed as arguments to methods.

Answer: FALSE

10) No statement outside the method in which a parameter variable is declared can access the parameter
by its name.
Answer: TRUE

11) The expression in a return statement can be any expression that has a value.
Answer: TRUE

12) A value-returning method can return a reference to a non-primitive type.

Answer: TRUE

10
Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
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Kynon was happy. He had made his point with the people, and he
was celebrating. But Stark noticed that though his tongue grew thick,
it did not loosen.
Luhar grew steadily more morose and silent, glancing covertly across
the table at Stark. Delgaun toyed with his goblet, and his yellow gaze
which gave nothing away moved restlessly between Berild and Stark.
Berild drank not at all. She sat a little apart, with her face in shadow,
and her red mouth smiled. Her thoughts, too, were her own secret.
But Stark knew that she was still watching him, and he knew that
Delgaun was aware of it.
Presently Kynon said, "Delgaun and I have some talking to do, so I'll
bid you gentlemen farewell for the present. You, Stark, and Luhar—
I'm going back into the desert at midnight, and you're going with me,
so you'd better get some sleep."
Stark nodded. He rose and went out, with the others.
An attendant showed him to his quarters, in the north wing. Stark
had not rested for twenty-four hours, and he was glad of the chance
to sleep.
He lay down. The wine spun in his head, and Berild's smile mocked
him. Then his thoughts turned to Ashton, and his promise. Presently
he slept, and dreamed.

He was a boy on Mercury again, running down a path that led from a
cave mouth to the floor of a valley. Above him the mountains rose
into the sky and were lost beyond the shallow atmosphere. The rocks
danced in the terrible heat, but the soles of his feet were like iron,
and trod them lightly. He was quite naked.
The blaze of the sun between the valley walls was like the shining
heart of Hell. It did not seem to the boy N'Chaka that it could ever be
cold again, yet he knew that when darkness came there would be ice
on the shallows of the river. The gods were constantly at war.
He passed a place, ruined by earthquake. It was a mine, and N'Chaka
remembered dimly that he had once lived there, with several white-
skinned creatures shaped like himself. He went on without a second
glance.
He was searching for Tika. When he was old enough, he would mate
with her. He wanted to hunt with her now, for she was fleet and as
keen as he at scenting out the great lizards.
He heard her voice calling his name. There was terror in it, and
N'Chaka began to run. He saw her, crouched between two huge
boulders, her light fur stained with blood.
A vast black-winged shadow swooped down upon him. It glared at
him with its yellow eyes, and its long beak tore at him. He thrust his
spear at it, but talons hooked into his shoulder, and the golden eyes
were close to him, bright and full of death.
He knew those eyes. Tika screamed, but the sound faded, everything
faded but those eyes. He sprang up, grappling with the thing....
A man's voice yelling, a man's hands thrusting him away. The dream
receded. Stark came back to reality, dropping the scared attendant
who had come to waken him.
The man cringed away from him. "Delgaun sent me. He wants you—
in the council room." Then he turned and fled.

Stark shook himself. The dream had been terribly real. He went down
to the council room. It was dusk now, and the torches were lighted.
Delgaun was waiting, and Berild sat beside him at the table. They
were alone there. Delgaun looked up, with his golden eyes.
"I have a job for you, Stark," he said. "You remember the captain of
Kynon's men, in the square today?"
"I do."
"His name is Freka, and he's a good man, but he's addicted to a
certain vice. He'll be up to his ears in it by now, and somebody has to
get him back by the time Kynon leaves. Will you see to it?"
Stark glanced at Berild. It seemed to him that she was amused,
whether at him or at Delgaun he could not tell. He asked,
"Where will I find him?"
"There's only one place where he can get his particular poison—
Kala's, out on the edge of Valkis. It's in the old city, beyond the lower
quays." Delgaun smiled. "You may have to be ready with your fists,
Stark. Freka may not want to come."
Stark hesitated. Then, "I'll do my best," he said, and went out into
the dusky streets of Valkis.
He crossed a square, heading away from the palace. A twisting lane
swallowed him up. And quite suddenly, someone took his arm and
said rapidly,
"Smile at me, and then turn aside into the alley."
The hand on his arm was small and brown, the voice very pretty with
its accompaniment of little chiming bells. He smiled, as she had bade
him, and turned aside into the alley, which was barely more than a
crack between two rows of houses.
Swiftly, he put his hands against the wall, so that the girl was
prisoned between them. A green-eyed girl, with golden bells braided
in her black hair, and impudent breasts bare above a jewelled girdle.
A handsome girl, with a proud look to her.
The serving girl who had stood beside the litter in the square, and
had watched Kynon with such bleak hatred.
"Well," said Stark. "And what do you want with me, little one?"
She answered, "My name is Fianna. And I do not intend to kill you,
neither will I run away."
Stark let his hands drop. "Did you follow me, Fianna?"
"I did. Delgaun's palace is full of hidden ways, and I know them all. I
was listening behind the panel in the council room. I heard you speak
out against Kynon, and I heard Delgaun's order, just now."
"So?"
"So, if you meant what you said about the tribes, you had better get
away now, while you have the chance. Kynon lied to you. He will use
you, and then kill you, as he will use and then destroy his own
people." Her voice was hot with bitter fury.
Stark gave her a slow smile that might have meant anything, or
nothing.
"You're a Valkisian, Fianna. What do you care what happens to the
barbarians?"
Her slightly tilted green eyes looked scornfully into his.
"I'm not trying to trap you, Earthman. I hate Kynon. And my mother
was a woman of the desert."
She paused, then went on sombrely, "Also, I serve the lady Berild,
and I have learned many things. There is trouble coming, greater
trouble than Kynon knows." She asked, suddenly, "What do you know
of the Ramas?"
"Nothing," he answered, "except that they don't exist now, if they
ever did."
Fianna gave him an odd look. "Perhaps they don't. Will you listen to
me, Earthman from Mercury? Will you get away, now that you know
you're marked for death?"
Stark said, "No."
"Even if I tell you that Delgaun has set a trap for you at Kala's?"
"No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fianna."
He bent and kissed her, because she was very young and honest.
Then he turned and went on his way.
 V

Night came swiftly. Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter
and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where
there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons.
He saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded
and worn by time, and went toward them. Presently he found that he
was following a faint but definite path, threaded between the ancient
houses. It was very still, so that the dry whisper of the drifting dust
was audible.
He passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad
way that had once led up from the harbor. A little way ahead, on the
other side, he saw a tall building half fallen in ruin. Its windows were
shuttered, barred with light, and from it came the sound of voices
and a thin thread of music, very reedy and evil.
Stark approached it, slipping through the ragged shadows as though
he had no more weight to him than a drift of smoke. Once a door
banged and a man came out of Kala's and passed by, going down to
Valkis. Stark saw his face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast,
rather than a man. He muttered to himself as he went, and once he
laughed, and Stark felt a loathing in him.
He waited until the sound of footsteps had died away. The ruined
houses gave no sign of danger. A lizard rustled between the stones,
and that was all. The moonlight lay bright and still on Kala's door.
Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it made a
sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond him. Then
he held his breath, listening.
No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty
houses.
Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He
flung open the door of Kala's dive.
Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air.
Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which
poured down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little
pools of radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men
and women whose faces were slack and bestial.
Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga—the
going-back—the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism
and let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have
been stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been
destroyed. But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law.
He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was
sprawled under one of the Shanga-lamps, eyes closed, face brutish,
growling and twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily
become.
A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. "I am Kala. What do you
wish, Outlander?"
He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years
ago as you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her
hair, and Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned
him sick. It was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very
heart of evil.
Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his
searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was
a note of warning in her voice.
He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap
Fianna had told him of.
He said, "Bring me wine."
"Will you try the lamp of Going-back, Outlander? It brings much joy."
"Perhaps later. Now, I wish wine."
She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench who came
between the sprawled figures with an earthen mug. Stark sat down
beside a table, where his back was to the wall and he could see both
the door and the whole room.
Kala had returned to her own heap of furs by the door, but her
basilisk eyes were alert.
Stark made a pretence of drinking, but his mind was very busy, very
cold.
Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast.
He would fight, and Kala would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes
would rise and fight also.
But he would have needed no warning about that—and Delgaun
himself had said there would be trouble.
No. There was something more.
He let his gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were
other rooms off of it, the openings hung with ragged curtains.
Through the rents, Stark could see others of Kala's customers
sprawled under Shanga-lamps, and some of these had gone so far
back from humanity that they were hideous to behold. But still there
was no sign of danger to himself.
There was only one odd thing. The room nearest to where Freka sat
was empty, and its curtains were only partly drawn.
Stark began to brood on the emptiness of that room.
He beckoned Kala to him. "I will try the lamp," he said. "But I wish
privacy. Have it brought to that room, there."
Kala said, "That room is taken."
"But I see no one!"
"It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your lamp
brought here."
"No," said Stark. "The hell with it. I'm going."
He flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, he placed
his eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.
Luhar of Venus came out of the empty room. His face was worried,
and Stark smiled. He went back and stood flat against the wall beside
the door.
In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing his gun
as he did so.
Stark jumped him.
Luhar let out one angry cry. His gun went off a vicious streak of flame
across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones
of his wrist together so that he dropped it clashing on the stones. He
whirled around, raking Stark's face with his nails as he clawed for the
Earthman's eyes, and Stark hit him. Luhar fell, rolling over, and
before he could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and
thrown it away into the ruins across the street.
Luhar came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell
with him, back through Kala's door, and they rolled together among
the foul furs and cushions. Luhar was built of spring steel, with no
softness in him anywhere, and his long fingers were locked around
Stark's throat.
Kala screamed with fury. She caught a whip from among her cushions
—a traditional weapon along the Low-Canals—and began to lash the
two men impartially, her hair flying in tangled locks across her face.
The bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and
growled.
The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of his back beneath it.
He snarled and staggered to his feet, with Luhar still clinging to the
death grip on his throat. He pushed Luhar's face away from him with
both hands and threw himself forward, over a table, so that Luhar
was crushed beneath him.
The Venusian's breath left him with a whistling grunt. His fingers
relaxed. Stark struck his hands away. He rose and bent over Luhar
and picked him up, gripping him cruelly so that he turned white with
the pain, and raised him high and flung him bodily into the growling,
beast-faced men who were shambling toward him.
Kala leaped at Stark, cursing, striking him with the coiling lash. He
turned. The thin veneer of civilization was gone from Stark now,
erased in a second by the first hint of battle. His eyes blazed with a
cold light. He took the whip out of Kala's hand and laid his palm
across her evil face, and she fell and lay still.
He faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden men who walled him off
from what he had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to his
vision, partly blood, partly sheer rage. He could see Freka standing
erect in the corner, his head weaving from side to side brutishly.
Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of men who were no
longer quite men.

Hands struck and clawed him. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes
glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of
snarls and bestial laughter in his ears. The blood-lust had spread to
these creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore him down
with the weight of their writhing bodies.
They bit him and savaged him in a blind way, and he fought his way
up again, shaking them off with his great shoulders, trampling them
under his boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood
rose on the choking air.
Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled
and flung himself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip.
It cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and he sagged into Stark's
arms.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Stark saw Luhar. He had risen and
crept around the edge of the fight. He was behind Stark now, and
there was a knife in his hand.
Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhar
rushed in, he crouched and went backward, his head and shoulders
taking the Venusian low in the belly. He felt the hot kiss of the blade
in his flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhar could
strike again, Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhar's
skull rang on the flagging. The Earthman's fist rose and fell twice.
After that, Luhar did not move.
Stark got to his feet. He stood with his knees bent and his shoulders
flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of his
throat was one of pure savagery.
He moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like
a dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave
back from him. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and
there was something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend
them apart that penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds.
Kala sat up on the floor, and snarled, "Get out."
Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then he lifted
Freka to his feet and laid him over his shoulder like a sack of meal
and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and
way was made for him.
He carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the
twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at him
and drew back, out of his path. He came to Delgaun's palace. The
guards closed in behind him, but they did not ask that he stop.
Delgaun was in the council room, and Berild was still with him. It
seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private
talk. Delgaun rose to his feet as Stark came in, so sharply that his
goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at his feet.
Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor.
"I have brought Freka," he said. "Luhar is still at Kala's."
He looked into Delgaun's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of his
dream. It was hard not to kill.
Suddenly the woman laughed, very clear and ringing, and her
laughter was all for Delgaun.
"Well done, wild man," she said to Stark. "Kynon is lucky to have
such a captain. One word for the future, though—watch out for
Freka. He won't forgive you this."
Stark said thickly, looking at Delgaun, "This hasn't been a night for
forgiveness." Then he added, "I can handle Freka."
Berild said, "I like you, wild man." Her eyes dwelt on Stark's face,
curious, compelling. "Ride beside me when we go. I would know
more about you."
And she smiled.
A dark flush crept over Delgaun's face. In a voice tight with fury he
said, "Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing
for you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!"
He would have said more in his anger, but Berild said sharply,
"We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight."
Stark went. And as he went, his brow was furrowed deep by a
strange doubt.

VI
At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynon's caravan
formed again and went out of Valkis with thundering drums and
skirling pipes. Delgaun was there to see them go, and the cheering of
the people rang after them on the desert wind.
Stark rode alone. He was in a brooding mood and wanted no
company, least of all that of the Lady Berild. She was beautiful, she
was dangerous, and she belonged to Kynon, or to Delgaun, or
perhaps to both of them. In Stark's experience, women like that were
sudden death, and he wanted no part of her. At any rate, not yet.
Luhar rode ahead with Kynon. He had come dragging into the square
at the mounting, his face battered and swollen, an ugly look is his
eyes. Kynon gave one quick look from him to Stark, who had his own
scars, and said harshly,
"Delgaun tells me there's a blood feud between you two. I want no
more of it, understand? After you're paid off you can kill each other
and welcome, but not until then. Is that clear?"
Stark nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Luhar muttered assent, and
they had not looked at each other since.
Freka rode in his customary place by Kynon, which put him near to
Luhar. It seemed to Stark that their beasts swung close together
more often than was necessary from the roughness of the track.
The big barbarian captain sat rigidly erect in his saddle, but Stark had
seen his face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute look
still clouding his eyes. There was a purple mark on his temple, but
Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth—Freka would
not forgive him either the indignity or the hangover of his unfinished
wallow under the lamps of Shanga.
The dead sea bottom widened away under the black sky. As they left
the lights of Valkis behind, winding their way over the sand and the
ribs of coral, dropping lower with every mile into the vast basin, it
was hard to believe that there could be life anywhere on a world that
could produce such cosmic desolation.
The little moons fled away, trailing their eerie shadows over rock
formations tortured into impossible shapes by wind and water,
peering into clefts that seemed to have no bottom, turning the sand
white as bone. The iron stars blazed, so close that the wind seemed
edged with their frosty light. And in all that endless space nothing
moved, and the silence was so deep that the coughing howl of a
sand-cat far away to the east made Stark jump with its loudness.
Yet Stark was not oppressed by the wilderness. Born and bred to the
wild and barren places, this desert was more kin to him than the
cities of men.
After a while there was a jangling of brazen bangles behind him and
Fianna came up. He smiled at her, and she said rather sullenly,
"The Lady Berild sent me, to remind you of her wish."
Stark glanced to where the scarlet-curtained litter rocked along, and
his eyes glinted.
"She's not one to let go of a thing, is she?"
"No." Fianna saw that no one was within earshot, and then said
quietly, "Was it as I said, at Kala's?"
Stark nodded. "I think, little one, that I owe you my life. Luhar would
have killed me as soon as I tackled Freka."
He reached over and touched her hand where it lay on the bridle.
She smiled, a young girl's smile that seemed very sweet in the
moonlight, honest and comradely.
It was odd to be talking of death with a pretty girl in the moonlight.
Stark said, "Why does Delgaun want to kill me?"
"He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But
perhaps I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so
he fears you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way."
"I thought Berild was Kynon's woman."
"Perhaps she is—for the time," answered Fianna enigmatically. Then
she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. "I
have risked much already. Please—don't let it be known that I've
spoken to you, beyond what I was sent to say."
Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realized with a shock that
Fianna, too, stood on the edge of a quicksand.
"Don't be afraid," he said, and meant it. "We'd better go."
She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, "Be
careful, Eric John Stark!"
Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of
his name on her lips.
The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then
there was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is,
perfectly at ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter
her skin showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet
darkness.
"Are you stubborn, wild man?" she asked. "Or do you find me
distasteful?"
He had not realized before how rich and soft her voice was. He
looked down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said,
"I find you most damnably attractive—and that's why I'm stubborn."
"Afraid?"
"I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?"
She laughed, half scornfully. "Kynon's ambitions leave no room for
me. We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen—and
he finds my counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from
that, there is nothing."
Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom.
"And Delgaun?"
"He wants me, but...." She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone
quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret
pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky.
"I belong to no one," she said. "I am my own."
Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him.
He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating
Delgaun's words,
"Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for
you in me, the creature of an hour."
He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath
was sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said,
"The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time—as
long as eternity, if one wills it so."
"Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come
at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his
bite is fatal."
He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers,
naked in the biting wind.
"My hours with women are short ones," he said. "They come after
the battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come
and see you."
He spurred away and left her without a backward look, and the skin
of his back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife. But the only
thing that followed him was a disturbing echo of laughter down the
wind.
Dawn came. Kynon beckoned Stark to his side, and pointed out at
the cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of basalt black
against the burning white.
"This is the country you will lead your men over. Learn it." He was
speaking to Luhar as well. "Learn every water hole, every vantage
point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no better
fighters than the Dryland men when they're well led, and you must
prove to them that you can lead. You'll work with their own chieftains
—Freka, and the others you'll meet when we reach Sinharat."
Luhar said, "Sinharat?"
"My headquarters. It's about seven days' march—an island city, old as
the moons. The Rama cult was strong there, legend has it, and it's a
sort of holy place to the tribesmen. That's why I picked it."
He took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea
bottom toward the Border, and his eyes held the same pitiless light as
the sun that baked the desert.
"Very soon, now," he said, more to himself than the others. "Only a
handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own
blood. And after that...."
He laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that
what Berild said of him was true. There was a flame of ambition in
Kynon that would let nothing stand in its way.
He measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the
eagle look of his face and the iron that lay beneath his joviality. Then
Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if he would
ever see Tarak or hear Simon Ashton's voice again.
For three days they marched without incident. At noon they made a
dry camp and slept away the blazing hours, and then went on again
under a darkening sky, a long line of tall men and rangy beasts, with
the scarlet litter blooming like a strange flower in the midst of it.
Jingling bridles and dust, and padded hoofs trampling the bones of
the sea, toward the island city of Sinharat.
Stark did not speak again to Berild, nor did she send for him. Fianna
would pass him in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For her
sake, he did not stop her.
Neither Luhar nor Freka came near him. They avoided him pointedly,
except when Kynon called them all together to discuss some point of
strategy. But the two seemed to have become friends, and drank
together from the same bottle of wine.
Stark slept always beside his mount, his back guarded and his gun
loose. The hard lessons learned in his childhood had stayed with him,
and if there was a footfall near him in the dust he woke often before
the beast did.

Toward morning of the fourth night the wind, that never seemed to
falter from its steady blowing, began to drop. At dawn it was dead
still, and the rising sun had a tinge of blood. The dust rose under the
feet of the beasts and fell again where it had risen.
Stark began to sniff the air. More and more often he looked toward
the north, where there was a long slope as flat as his palm that
stretched away farther than he could see.
A restless unease grew within him. Presently he spurred ahead to join
Kynon.
"There is a storm coming," he said, and turned his head northward
again.
Kynon looked at him curiously.
"You even have the right direction," he said. "One might think you
were a native." He, too, gazed with brooding anger at the long sweep
of emptiness.
"I wish we were closer to the city. But one place is as bad as another
when the khamsin blows, and the only thing to do is keep moving.
You're a dead dog if you stop—dead and buried."
He swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in his
Martian profanity, as though the storm were a personal enemy.
"Pass the word along to force it—dump whatever they have to to
lighten the loads. And get Berild out of that damned litter. Stick by
her, will you, Stark? I've got to stay here, at the head of the line. And
don't get separated. Above all, don't get separated!"
Stark nodded and dropped back. He got Berild mounted, and they
left the litter there, a bright patch of crimson on the sand, its curtains
limp in the utter stillness.
Nobody talked much. The beasts were urged on to the top of their
speed. They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break out of line
and run for it. The sun rose higher.
One hour.
The windless air shimmered. The silence lay upon the caravan with a
crushing hand. Stark went up and down the line, lending a hand to
the sweating drovers with the pack animals that now carried only
water skins and a bare supply of food. Fianna rode close beside
Berild.
Two hours.
For the first time that day there was a sound in the desert.
It came from far off, a moaning wail like the cry of a giantess in
travail. It rushed closer, rising as it did so to a dry and bitter shriek
that filled the whole sky, shook it, and tore it open, letting in all the
winds of hell.
It struck swiftly. One moment the air was clear and motionless. The
next, it was blind with dust and screaming as it fled, tearing with
demoniac fury at everything in its path.
Stark spurred toward the women, who were only a few feet away but
already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand.
Someone blundered into him in the murk. Long hair whipped across
his face and he reached out, crying "Fianna! Fianna!" A woman's
hand caught his, and a voice answered, but he could not hear the
words.
Then, suddenly, his beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The
woman's grip had broken. Hard masculine hands clawed at him. He
could make out, dimly, the features of two men, close to his.
Luhar, and Freka.
His beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged
from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand.

VII
He lay half-stunned for a moment, his breath knocked out of him.
There was a terrible reptilian screaming sounding thin through the
roar of the wind. Vague shapes bolted past him, and twice he was
nearly crushed by their trampling hoofs.
Luhar and Freka must have waited their chance. It was so beautifully
easy. Leave Stark alone and afoot, and the storm and the desert
between them would do the work, with no blame attaching to any
man.
Stark got to his feet, and a human body struck him at the knees so
that he went down again. He grappled with it, snarling, before he
realized that the flesh between his hands was soft and draped in
silken cloth. Then he saw that he was holding Berild.
"It was I," she gasped, "and not Fianna."
Her words reached him very faintly, though he knew she was yelling
at the top of her lungs. She must have been knocked from her own
mount when Luhar thrust between them.
Gripping her tightly, so that she should not be blown away, Stark
struggled up again. With all his strength, it was almost impossible to
stand.
Blinded, deafened, half strangled, he fought his way forward a few
paces, and suddenly one of the pack beasts loomed shadow-like
beside him, going by with a rush and a squeal.
By the grace of Providence and his own swift reflexes, he caught its
pack lashings, clinging with the tenacity of a man determined not to
die. It floundered about, dragging them, until Berild managed to
grasp its trailing halter rope. Between them, they fought the creature
down.
Stark clung to its head while the woman clambered to its back,
twisting her arm through the straps of the pad. A silken scarf
whipped toward him. He took it and tied it over the head of the beast
so it could breathe, and after that it was quieter.
There was no direction, no sight of anything, in that howling inferno.
The caravan seemed to have been scattered like a drift of autumn
leaves. Already, in the few brief moments he had stood still, Stark's
legs were buried to the knees in a substratum of sand that rolled like
water. He pulled himself free and started on, going nowhere,
remembering Kynon's words.
Berild ripped her thin robe apart and gave him another strip of silk for
himself. He bound it over his nose and eyes, and some of the choking
and the blindness abated.
Stumbling, staggering, beaten by the wind as a child is beaten by a
strong man, Stark went on, hoping desperately to find the main body
of the caravan, and knowing somehow that the hope was futile.
The hours that followed were nightmare. He shut his mind to them,
in a way that a civilized man would have found impossible. In his
childhood there had been days, and nights, and the problems had
been simple ones—how to survive one span of light that one might
then struggle to survive the span of darkness that came after. One
thing, one danger, at a time.
Now there was a single necessity. Keep moving. Forget tomorrow, or
what happened to the caravan, or where the little Fianna with her
bright eyes may be. Forget thirst, and the pain of breathing, and the
fiery lash of sand on naked skin. Only don't stand still.
It was growing dark when the beast fell against a half-buried boulder
and snapped its foreleg. Stark gave it a quick and merciful death.
They took the straps from the pad and linked themselves together.
Each took as much food as he could carry, and Stark shouldered the
single skin of water that fortune had vouchsafed them.
They staggered on, and Berild did not whimper.
Night came, and still the khamsin blew. Stark wondered at the
woman's strength, for he had to help her only when she fell. He had
lost all feeling himself. His body was merely a thing that continued to
move only because it had been ordered not to stop.
The haze in his own mind had grown as thick as the black obscurity
of the night. Berild had ridden all day, but he had walked, and there
was an end even to his strength. He was approaching it now, and
was too weary even to be afraid.
He became aware at some indeterminate time that Berild had fallen
and was dragging her weight against the straps. He turned blindly to
help her up. She was saying something, crying his name, striking at
him so that he should hear her words and understand.
At last he did. He pulled the wrappings from his face and breathed
clean air. The wind had fallen. The sky was growing clear.
He dropped in his tracks and slept, with the exhausted woman half
dead beside him.

Thirst brought them both awake in the early dawn. They drank from
the skin, and then sat for a time looking at the desert, and at each
other, thinking of what lay ahead.
"Do you know where we are?" Stark asked.
"Not exactly." Berild's face was shadowed with weariness. It had
changed, and somehow, to Stark, it had grown more beautiful,
because there was no weakness in it.
She thought a minute, looking at the sun. "The wind blew from the
north," she said. "Therefore we have come south from the track.
Sinharat lies that way, across the waste they call the Belly of Stones."
She pointed to the north and east.
"How far?"
"Seven, eight days, afoot."
Stark measured their supply of water and shook his head. "It'll be dry
walking."
He rose and took up the skin, and Berild came beside him without a
word. Her red hair hung loose over her shoulders. The rags of her
silken robe had been torn away by the wind, leaving her only the
loose skirt of the desert women, and her belt and collar of jewels.
She walked erect with a steady, swinging stride, and it was almost
impossible for Stark to remember her as she had been, riding like a
lazy queen in her scarlet litter.
There was no way to shelter themselves from the midday sun. The
sun of Mars at its worst, however, was only a pale candle beside the
sun of Mercury, and it did not bother Stark. He made Berild lie in the
shadow of his own body, and he watched her face, relaxed and
unfamiliar in sleep.
For the first time, then, he was conscious of a strangeness in her. He
had seen so little of her before, in Valkis, and almost nothing on the
trail. Now, there was little of her mind or heart that she could conceal
from him.
Or was there? There were moments, while she slept, when the
shadows of strange dreams crossed her face. Sometimes, in the
unguarded moment of waking, he would see in her eyes a look he
could not read, and his primitive senses quivered with a vague ripple
of warning.
Yet all through those blazing days and frosty nights, tortured with
thirst and weary to exhaustion, Berild was magnificent. Her white
skin was darkened by the sun and her hair became a wild red mane,
but she smiled and set her feet resolutely by his, and Stark thought
she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
On the fourth day they climbed a scarp of limestone worn in ages
past by the sea, and looked out over the place called the Belly of
Stones.
The sea bottom curved downward below them into a sort of gigantic
basin, the farther rim of which was lost in shimmering waves of heat.
Stark thought that never, even on Mercury, had he seen a place more
cruel and utterly forsaken of gods or men.
It seemed as though some primal glacier must have met its death
here in the dim dawn of Mars, hollowing out its own grave. The body
of the glacier had melted away, but its bones were left.
Bones of basalt, of granite and marble and porphyry, of every
conceivable color and shape and size, picked up by the ice as it
marched southward from the pole and dropped here as a cairn to
mark its passing.
The Belly of Stones. Stark thought that its other name was Death....
For the first time, Berild faltered. She sat down and bent her head
over her hands.
"I am tired," she said. "Also, I am afraid."
Stark asked, "Has it ever been crossed?"
"Once. But they were a war party, mounted and well supplied."
Stark looked out across the stones. "We will cross it," he said.
Berild raised her head. "Somehow I believe you." She rose slowly and
put her hands on his breast, over the strong beating of his heart.
"Give me your strength, wild man," she whispered. "I shall need it."
He drew her to him and kissed her, and it was a strange and painful
kiss, for their lips were cracked and bleeding from their terrible thirst.
Then they went down together into the place called the Belly of
Stones.

VIII

The desert had been a pleasant and kindly place. Stark looked back
upon it with longing. And yet this inferno of blazing rock was so like
the valleys of his boyhood that it did not occur to him to lie down and
die.
They rested for a time in the sheltered crevice under a great leaning
slab of blood-red stone, moistening their swollen tongues with a few
drops of stinking water from the skin. At nightfall they drank the last
of it, but Berild would not let him throw the skin away.
Darkness, and a lunar silence. The chill air sucked the day's heat out
of the rocks and the iron frost came down, so that Stark and the red-
haired woman must keep moving or freeze.
Stark's mind grew clouded. He spoke from time to time, in a croaking
whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight
Belt. It seemed to him that he was hunting, as he had so many times
before, in the waterless places—for the blood of the great lizard
would save him from thirst.
But nothing lived in the Belly of Stones. Nothing, but the two who
crept and staggered across it under the low moons.
Berild fell, and could not rise again. Stark crouched beside her. Her
face stared up at him, white in the moonlight, her eyes burning and
strange.
"I will not die!" she whispered, not to him, but to the gods. "I will not
die!"
And she clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging herself
onward. It was uncanny, the madness that she had for life.
Stark raised her up and carried her. His breath came in deep sobbing
gasps. After a while he, too, fell. He went on like a beast on all fours,
dragging the woman.
He knew dimly that he was climbing. There was a glimmering of
dawn in the sky. His hands slipped on a lip of sand and he went
rolling down a smooth slope. At length he stopped and lay on his
back like a dead thing.
The sun was high when consciousness returned to him. He saw Berild
lying near him and crawled to her, shaking her until her eyes opened.
Her hands moved feebly and her lips formed the same four words. I
will not die.
Stark strained his eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of
Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great
difficulty he got the woman to her feet, supporting her.
He tried to tell her that they must go on, but he could no longer form
the words. He could only gesture and urge her forward, in the
direction of the city.
But she refused to go. "Too far ... die ... without water...."
He knew that she was right, but still he was not ready to give up.
She began to move away from him, toward the south, and he
thought that she had gone mad and was wandering. Then he saw
that she was peering with awful intensity at the line of the scarp that
formed this wall of the Belly of Stones. It rose into a great ridge,
serrated like the backbone of a whale, and some three miles away a
long dorsal fin of reddish rock curved out into the desert.
Berild made a little sobbing noise in her throat. She began to plod
toward the distant promontory.
Stark caught up with her. He tried to stop her, but she would not be
stopped, turning a feral glare upon him.
She croaked, "Water!" and pointed.
He was sure now that she was mad. He told her so, forcing the
painful words out of his throat, reminding her of Sinharat and that
she was going away from any possible help.
She said again, quite sanely, "Too far. Two—three days without
water." She pointed. "Monastery—old well—a chance...."
Stark decided that he had little to lose by trusting her. He nodded and
went with her toward the curve of rock.
The three miles might have been three hundred. At last they came up
under the ragged cliffs—and there was nothing there but sand.
Stark looked at the woman. A great rage and a deep sense of futility
came over him. They were indeed lost.
But Berild had gone a few steps farther. With a hoarse cry, she bent
over what had seemed merely a slab of stone fallen from the cliff,
and Stark saw that it was a carven pillar, half buried. Now he was
able to make out the mounded shape of a ruin, of which only the
foundations and a few broken columns were left.
For a long while Berild stood by the pillar, her eyes closed. Stark got
the uncanny feeling that she was visualizing the place as it had been,
though the wall must have been dust a thousand years ago.
Presently she moved. He followed her, and it was strange to see her,
on the naked sand, treading the arbitrary patterns of vanished
corridors.
She came to a halt, in a broad flat space that might once have been
a central courtyard. There she fell on her knees and began to dig.
Stark got down beside her. They scrabbled like a pair of dogs in the
yielding sand. Stark's nails slipped across something hard, and there
was a yellow glint through the dusty ochre. Within a few minutes
they had bared a golden cover six feet across, very massive and
wonderfully carved with the symbols of some lost god of the sea.
Stark struggled to lift the thing away. He could not move it. Then
Berild pressed a hidden spring and the cover slid back of itself.
Beneath it, sweet and cold, protected through all these ages, water
stirred gently against mossy stones.

An hour later, Stark and Berild lay sleeping, soaked to the skin, their
very hair dripping with the blessed dampness.
That night, when the low moons roved over the desert, they sat by
the well, drowsy with an animal sense of rest and repletion. And
Stark looked at the woman and said,
"I know you now."
"What do you know, wild man?"
Stark said quietly, "You are a Rama."
She did not answer at once. Then she said, "I was bred in these
deserts. Is it so strange that I should know of this well?"
"Strange that you didn't mention it before. You were afraid, weren't
you, that if you led me here your secret would come out? But it was
that, or die."
He leaned forward, studying her.
"If you had led me straight to the well, I might not have wondered.
But you had to stop and remember, how the halls were built and
where the doorways were that led to the inner court. You lived in this
place when it was whole. And no one, not even Kynon himself, knows
of it but you."
"You dream, wild man. The moon is in your eyes."
Stark shook his head slowly. "I know."
She laughed, and stretched her arms wide on the sand.
"But I am young," she said. "And men have told me I am beautiful. It
is good to be young, for youth has nothing to do with ashes and
empty skulls."
She touched his arm, and little darts of fire went through his flesh,
warm from his fingertips.
"Forget your dreams, wild man. They're madness, gone with the
morning."
He looked down at her in the clear pale light, and she was young,
and beautifully made, and her lips were smiling.
He bent his head. Her arms went round him. Her hair blew soft
against his cheek. Then, suddenly, she set her teeth cruelly into his
lip. He cried out and thrust her away, and she sat back on her heels,
mocking him.
"That," she said, "is because you called Fianna's name instead of
mine, when the storm broke."
Stark cursed her. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. He
reached out and caught her, and again she laughed, a peculiarly
sweet, wicked sound.
The wind blew over them, sighing, and the desert was very still.
For two days they remained among the ruins. At evening of the
second day Stark filled the water skin, and Berild replaced the golden
cover on the well. They began the last long march toward Sinharat.
 IX

Stark saw it rising against the morning sky—a city of gold and
marble, high on an island of rose-red coral laid bare by the vanished
sea. Sinharat, the Ever-Living.
Yet it had died. As he came closer to it, plodding slowly through the
sand, he saw that the place was no more than a beautiful corpse, the
lovely towers broken, the roofless palaces open to the sky. Whatever
life Kynon and his armies might have foisted upon Sinharat was no
more than the fleeting passage of ants across the perfect bones of
the dead.
"What was it like before?" he asked, "with the blue water around it,
and the banners flying?"
Berild turned a dark, calculating look upon him.
"I told you before to forget that madness. If you talk it, no one will
believe you."
"No one?"
"You had best not anger me, wild man," she said quietly. "I may be
your only hope of life, before this is over."
They did not speak again, going with slow weary steps toward the
city.
In the desert below the coral cliffs the armies of Kynon were
encamped. The tall warriors of Kesh and Shun waiting, with their
women and their beasts and their shining spears, for the pipers to cry
them over the Border. The skin tents and the long picket lines were
too many to count. In the distance, a convertible Kallman spacer that
Stark recognized as Knighton's made an ugly, jarring incongruity.
Lookouts sighted the two toiling figures in the distance. Men and
women and children began to stream out across the sand, and
presently a great cheering arose. Where he had looked on emptiness
for days, Stark was smothered now by the press of thousands. Berild
was picked up and carried on the shoulders of two chiefs, and men
would have carried Stark also, but he fought them off.
Broad flights of steps were cut in the coral. The throng flowed
upward along them. Ahead of them all went Eric John Stark, and he
was smiling. From time to time he asked a question, and men drew
back from that question, and his smile.
Up the steps and into the streets of Sinharat he went, with a slow,
restless stride, asking,
"Where is Luhar of Venus?"
Every man there read death in his face, but they did not try to stop
him.
People came out of the graceful ruins, drawn by the clamour, and the
tide rolled down the broad ways, the rose-red streets of coral, until it
spread out in the square before a great palace of gold and ivory and
white marble blinding in the sun.
Luhar of Venus came down the terraced steps, fresh from sleep, his
pale hair tumbled, his eyes still drowsy.
Others came through the door behind him. Stark did not see them.
They did not matter. Berild didn't matter, calling his name from where
she sat on the shoulders of the chiefs. Nothing, no one mattered, but
himself and Luhar.
He crossed the square, not hurrying, a dark ravaged giant in rags. He
saw Luhar pause on the bottom step. He saw the sleep and the
vagueness go out of the Venusian's eyes as they rested first on the
red-haired woman, then on himself. He saw the fear come into them,
and the undying hate.
Someone got between him and Luhar. Stark lifted the man and flung
him aside without breaking his stride, and went on. Luhar half
turned. He would have run away, back into the palace, but there
were too many now between him and the door. He crouched and
drew his gun.
Stark sprang.
He came like a great black panther leaping, and he struck low.
Luhar's shot went over his back. After that there was no more
shooting. There was a moment, terribly short and silent, in which the
two men lay entangled, straining against each other in a sort of
stasis. Then Luhar screamed.

Stark knew dimly that there were hands, many of them, trying to
drag him away. He clung growling to the Venusian until he was torn
loose by main force. He struggled against his captors, and through a
red haze he saw Kynon's face, close to his and very angry. Luhar was
not yet dead.
"I warned you, Stark!" said Kynon furiously. "I warned you."
Men were bending over Luhar. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark
saw that Delgaun was among them. He did not question at the time
how word had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgaun racing across
the dead sea bottom with his hired bravoes to search for the red-
haired woman. It was right that Delgaun should be there.
In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhar and Freka had tried
to kill him, and how Berild had been lost with him.
Kynon turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-
grey eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and the venom.
"He lies," whispered Luhar. "I saw him—he tried to run away and take
the woman with him."
Luhar of Venus, taking vengeance with his last breath.
Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up his cue. "It is
so," he said. "I was with Luhar. I saw it also."
Delgaun laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. He stood up, and looked at
Berild.
Berild's eyes were blazing. She ignored Delgaun and spoke to Kynon.
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